The problem of sulfur content in heavy oil is a challenge for researchers to meet the needs of environmentally friendly fuels. The catalyst preparation plays an important role in the desulfurization process. The synthesis of ZnO-activated carbon as a catalyst and its activity in oxidative desulfurization (ODS) reaction has been successfully carried out. In this work, the ZnO and activated carbon (AC) were blended by a solid-solid reaction. The ZnO, AC, and ZnO-AC were then characterized using acidity test with pyridine vapor adsorption, Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscope-Energy Dispersive X-Ray (SEM-EDX), and Surface Area Analyzer (SAA). ODS of dibenzothiophene (DBT) reaction was performed by using H2O2 under variation of the reaction time (30, 60, 120, and 150 min) for the ZnO-AC catalyst. The efficiency of ODS-DBT was analyzed by a UV-Visible spectrophotometer. The XRD analysis result showed that ZnO-AC blended displays new crystal peaks of Zn in the AC diffractogram. The surface area (734.351 m2/g) and acidity (4.8780 mmol/g) of ZnO-AC were higher than ZnO and AC themselves. ZnO-AC produced the highest efficiency of ODS-DBT which was 93.83% in the reaction time of 120 min. Therefore, the simple procedure of this physical blending was proved effective to homogenize between ZnO and AC into ZnO-AC so that it has good physicochemical properties as an ODS-DBT catalyst. Copyright © 2021 by Authors, Published by BCREC Group. This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0).

Simple and green preparation of ZnO blended with Parangtritis beach sand (BS) catalysts for oxidative desulfurization of dibenzothiophene (ODS-DBT) has been conducted. The ZnO-BS catalysts were prepared by blending ZnO with beach sand under a weight ratio of 1:1, 1:2, and 1:4, and then heated by microwave (MW) at 540 watts for 30 min, resulting in BS-MW, ZnO-MW, ZnO-BS-1-MW, ZnO-BS-2-MW, and ZnO-BS-4-MW, respectively. As a comparison, the ZnO-BS-1 was also heated by oven at 100 °C for 30 min produced ZnO-BS-1-OV. Each product was characterized by XRF, XRD, FTIR, acidity test by NH3 vapor adsorption, SAA, SEM-EDX, TEM, and magneticity test by an external magnetic field. Furthermore, each material was applied for ODS-DBT, and its product was analyzed by UV-Vis spectrophotometer and FTIR. The results showed that ZnO-BS-1-OV had the highest acidity of 2.3486 mmol/g and produced the highest DBT removal efficiency through the ODS reaction of 81.59%. The use of catalysts in ODS-DBT does not affect the main structure of the treated fuel. Therefore, the combination of ZnO with BS can provide good performance in ODS activity and facilitate the separation of catalysts after the reaction due to its magnetic iron oxide content.